Dice Wars

Dice Wars is a simple, but fun, strategy video game developed by Gamedesign and released in Flash in 2001. The game uses a combat system similar to that of the board game Risk, but on a randomly generated board with 2-8 players. It is a single-player-only game and uses AI opponents.

I don't remember how I came across this game, but it was no doubt on one of the various blogs I frequented in the early 2000s. It was either a direct link to this game, or through one of the many other Flash games developed by Gamedesign.

Contents

Status

This game is freely available online. I have beaten each opponent count.

Review

Overall: 4/10

Best Version: Flash

Good

The game is attractive looking and the interface is well-designed.

The rapid-paced animation makes it clear what is going on as you play.

At the end of the game, you can watch the history of the entire game as a replay.

Bad

After playing the game for a little while you will learn how easy it is to exploit the AI.

There are no difficulty settings, so, once you understand how the AI plays, you can pretty much win every time you're given a fair starting position.

Rather than write a better AI, the designers have the opponents gang up on you once you control about half the board.

Due to the randomness of the game, and the increased likelihood of being picked last on the first turn, you will occasionally lose the game before you even get a chance to move when playing with a large number of opponents.

The game doesn't evenly distribute the dice at the beginning of the game, usually some of the colors will have fewer dice than the others, and be in worse positions.

Though it may be confirmation bias, the dice rolls feel like they're weighted against the player. I've had massive leads lost by a long run of low rolls followed by high rolls from my opponents, but I rarely notice such runs in my favor.